Resident Evil 2 Devs On 3rd Person Camera: It Is Not A ‘Shooter’ But ‘Survival Horror’ Game

Resident Evil 2 Remake was revealed at Sony’s E3 2018 press conference. It is currently set to launch on January 29th for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The game is a third-person shooter with an emphasis on the survival horror elements instead of straight up shooter gameplay that were a major focus in every Resident Evil game after Resident Evil 4. This is according to the game producer in a recent interview.

Resident Evil 2 Remake ditches the fixed-camera perspective of its predecessor for a more modern third-person camera system. GameInformer recently interviewed the producers of Resident Evil 2 Remake, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, and Tsuyoshi Kanda, and asked them the reason for making this change for the remake.

Hirabayashi explained that back when they started to work on the remake for the first Resident Evil, they only had the fixed-camera perspective for the series. It was before the release of Resident Evil 4 which changed to the over-the-shoulder camera perspective for the series. This is one of the reason they settled on this camera for the Resident Evil 1 Remake.

In the case of Resident Evil 2 Remake, they had the choice of a first-person, third-person or fixed-camera perspective and they settled on the over-the-shoulder 3rd person camera for the Remake because it lined up with their goals of giving the fans the best experience possible with the remake.

Hirabayashi also assured the fans that this remake won’t be a traditional third-person shooter like Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6, but instead, the focus will be on presenting a third-person camera with survival horror elements.

“You look at Resident Evil 4, its combination of over-the-shoulder perspective and more shooter-based gameplay, and that was the same for Resident Evils 4, 5, and 6. Just because this remake has gone over-the-shoulder doesn’t mean that it also has a shooter focus. This is something we really want to make clear – we want people to separate in their minds what an over-the-shoulder game is and what a shooter is. Resident Evil 2 2019 is over-the-shoulder plus survival horror. Which is actually a kind of an unprecedented combination for the series.”

Tsuyoshi Kanda added: “But this game is going to be slower paced, resource management, survival-horror adventure gameplay with backtracking metroidvania exploration puzzle-solving – we’re not really adding shooter gameplay to it at all. I think if anyone has any concerns that over-the-shoulder is going to make it an action game, then we can tell you “No, it feels like Resident Evil 2,” it’s just that there’s a brand-new perspective.”